Weak suite of multimedia players. No routing profiles for bicycles or pedestrians.

Bottom Line

With better hardware buttons, beefed-up sensor, and an improved menu system, the Voya 320 is a big improvement over Averatec's older model. But don't expect much from the multimedia capabilities.

It's not rocket science. Anytime you can get more features for less money, that's usually a good thing, right? In a move that all but guarantees the demise of the Voya 350, Averatec's newly introduced Voya 320 does just that. With a list price of $300, the Voya 320 is loaded with new features and sports a newly designed case.

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Measuring 4.3 by 3.1 by 0.8 inches and weighing 6 ounces, the Voya 320 slips neatly into the shirt-pocket GPS category. It has the same 3.5-inch screen found on the Voya 350. Gone are the 350's cheesy little Chiclet-like keys and the hard-to-use four-way "jog" switch; they are replaced by four well-spaced round keysone for power, one for the main menu, and individual volume up and down buttons. Also missing is the stub antenna; Averatec chose to replace it with a fold-up patch antenna. And Averatec also upgraded the GPS module to a second-generation SiRF Star III chipset. With this beefed-up receiver and its excellent sensitivity, you can probably leave the patch antenna folded flat most of the time, unfolding it only in difficult reception areas.

The Voya 320 also now boasts three multimedia players. There's a picture viewer (JPG), and players for music (MP3 and WMA) and video (AVI, DIVX, MP4, and WMV). It's important to note that all of the map data for the 50 U.S. states and the entire Points of Interest (POI) database is stored on a 1GB SD card. Only about 60MB is available for your multimedia files. If you plan to view or listen to your files, you must either copy the contents of the 1GB card onto a larger card, or remove the card containing the program and map data and use your own multimedia card. Of course, you'll lose the mapping capability if you choose the latter option.

Interestingly, the multimedia player is the exact same player used in the TeleType WorldNav 3100. Thus, I wasn't surprised when I experienced the same playback problems that I experienced with the TeleType unit. Though many of my MP3s played properly, some of them did not. I sent a couple of the problematic files to Averatec for them to check out. I had no problems with WMA files. As an MP3 player, the Voya 320's features are quite bare-bones. There is no support for playlists and you can't shuffle songs.

I fared better when testing video. The 320-by-240 resolution AVI files I shot on my Canon SD550 played without incident, as did WMV files I crafted using WinDVD Creator. Likewise, TV shows I ripped into QVGA MPEG format ran smoothly.

The Voya's picture viewer was able to play all of the JPG files I threw at it, in sizes ranging from 256KB to 3MB. Scrolling through them, however did take some time. To render my 3MB image into the device's small preview size took a little over 12 seconds. To re-render the same image onto the full screen took over 25 seconds. And though there is a slide show of sorts, one that plays images in sequence, you can't control the time between pictures or rotate the photos.

As disappointing as I found the third-party media players to be, at least Averatec didn't change the basic navigation features that I liked on the Voya 350; the Voya 320's navigation functions are almost identical. Only minor changes to the user interface have been made, basically to accommodate the new multimedia capabilities.

The main map view features a 2D track up and 2D north up as well as the traditional 3D track up view. There's also a 3D north up featurean interesting view that's starting to grow on me. A hardware menu button now takes you to the main menu of the device, where you can choose between music, video, pictures, and navigation. Your only entry into the navigation menus is via the menu icon.

The main menu has four icons: Destination, Settings, Shortcuts, and System Information. The shortcuts menu has individual icons for six frequently searched POIs: ATM, Gas, Hospital, Parking, Restaurant, and Tourist information. A tap on any of these items brings up a list of nearest POIs for the selected category. The shortcuts menu also has an icon for "Go Home," along with an icon for setting your home location.

The Set Destination menu is the same as on the Voya 350. You have options for entering an address, intersection, POI, favorites, recently found destinations, or city center. If you choose to search by address, you have the option of entering either the city or the street first. The Voya 320 thoughtfully defaults to the state where it's located. Once you enter all of the data for the address, you can navigate to the address, add it to your favorites, or see the location on a map.

Once Navigate is chosen, the Voya 320 calculates a route according to your routing options. Your routing options include quickest, major roads, shortest, or local roads. You can also opt to individually include or exclude ferries, toll roads, or carpools. With an active route, the information panel at the bottom of the screen displays your estimated time of arrival, travel time, trip distance, and current speed. Your current street is shown at the bottom of the screen along with a graphic indicating turn direction. The distance to the turn appears at the top of the screen. A single tap of the next street name brings up the list view of turn-by-turn directions. This is also an improvement over the 350, which didn't offer this feature. The destination-options screen lets you specify roads to avoid, set up detours, or clear the current route. But the device doesn't offer modes for pedestrians or bicyclists.

As with the Voya 350, our road tests yielded no surprises. Routes generated were the same as those created on other Navteq-based devices. The Voya 320 does not have text-to-speech capabilities, but the spoken directions, available only in a female voice, were complete.

Overall, I like the Averatec Voya 320. I found the menu system very easy and intuitive to use. Although I'm disappointed in its media capabilities, the truth is most people don't buy a GPS device to play music or view videos.

Averatec Voya 320

good

Bottom Line: With better hardware buttons, beefed-up sensor, and an improved menu system, the Voya 320 is a big improvement over Averatec's older model. But don't expect much from the multimedia capabilities.

Averatec Voya 320

Averatec Voya 320

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